In a volume of Holocaust eyewitness testimonies published by the labor movement in Israel, the point is made that although the Jews in Europe knew well what had happened to many of their brethren, and what was awaiting them should they, too, be caught, many of them did not depart from their customary ways. In numerous places in the ghettos one could see through the windows Jews studying, or wearing tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries), praying the daily services in the midst of the required quorum of at least a minyan (ten men). On the High Holy Days they would put on the traditional kittel (white robe) and would pray with loud voices. Some of them even permitted themselves to walk in the streets clad in prayer shawls as if they were living in Jerusalem. It was as if the Jews had ceased being afraid.1Ya’akov Kurtz, Sefer Edut, Tel-Aviv, 1944, p. 323.
These practices were fairly widespread in all the ghettos; throughout Eastern Europe the Jews were the same. In Warsaw groups of baḥurim, young Talmud students, hid in bunkers scattered all over the ghetto, praying and studying Torah all day, unconcerned with the world outside. Only at night would some of them crawl out of their hiding places in search of food for the minimum needs of their sustenance. 2See, for example, Menashe Unger, Der Geistiker Viderstand fun Yidn in Ghettos und Lagern, Tel-Aviv, 1970, pp. 103–4 (quoted from Hillel Seidman, Yoman Ghetto Varsha, Tel-Aviv, 1946; New York, 1957). Similar groups were found in many other ghettos. For instance, a member of such a ḥavurah (fellowship), located at 47 Marinarska Street in the ghetto of Lodz, relates:
“From the outside our shtiebel looked like a deserted hut or like a partially broken-down cowshed; but inside — there was real Gan Eden (paradise). We studied Torah diligently; we prayed with great devotion; and occupied ourselves with ḥasidic teachings as in former times. We even had a kitchen and places to sleep. At night, the windows were boarded up; in general the camouflage was extremely successful. However, one day the voices of Torah study betrayed our hiding place to the Sonderkommando.”
The Sonders thought that they had discovered a group of ghetto smugglers, and instead they beheld a ḥasidic cell. “You are not of them (the smugglers)?” they asked, astounded. However, when they started inquiring about the young men’s status in the ghetto (why they did not have any “work cards,” why they did not work in any of the German shops), one of the young men hit upon the idea of betraying the “truth.” He took the leader of the Sonders aside and told him that they were indeed smugglers and fed him a long imaginary tale about their supposed underground activities. Finally, he bribed him with some money that they had in reserve to meet unexpected crises of this nature. This satisfied the Sonders who, for a while, even extended some protection to the “smugglers.” When, in the vast expulsions from the ghetto in 1942, their hiding place was again discovered, they managed to escape once more and reassembled in secret under another “address.” This sort of situation was indeed widespread; one must not forget that the overwhelming majority of Jews in Eastern Europe were Torah-observant.
The Germans saw to it that, judged by any standards, the conditions in the ghettos were intolerable. But things were incomparably worse in the labor and concentration camps and the insistence of religious Jews on continuing even there “as before” reached an even higher degree of heroism. In a volume published by Sifriat Po’alim, an enterprise of the left-wing Hashomer Haẓa’ir in Israel, we find the following description of religious life in Auschwitz:
“There were in the camp religious people who did not lose their faithfulness and even tried to fulfill the mitzvot ma’asiyot, the practical religious commandments. In Auschwitz there existed a ḥavurah of religious Jews that would meet daily in secret for tefillah beẓibbur (communal prayer).”
Writing in the same book, a survivor tells of a Jew in Auschwitz who stubbornly adhered to the dietary laws and refused to work on the Sabbath and the festivals:
“At first we thought he was mentally disturbed. In the course of the years, however, we learned to appreciate that his ‘madness’ was a manifestation of a strong personality and an exalted faith. He would eat only bread and water. Only seldom did he touch the warm food. On the Sabbath he would go out to work but only pretend to perform actual work…This man got himself tefillin and daily he would get up before all of us and pray in them. Not many had this kind of attachment of Jewish religious practice, but those who did were elevated to a high moral plateau.”3Anashim vaEfer — Sefer Auschwitz-Birkenau, ed. Israel Gutman, Merhavya, 1957, p. 86.
It is of course unlikely that this eyewitness was familiar with all the Jewish observances that were kept in that vast camp. There are other testimonies of many more such occurrences and practices in Auschwitz and, of course, Auschwitz was no exception. What Jews did in Auschwitz they did in other camps as well.
Young people originating from practically every country in Europe would assemble in a corner of the youth barracks in Auschwitz for daily services. One of the participants tells: “Praying ‘in community’ and the keeping of the mitzvot brought us near to each other, though by origin and background we differed widely.” 4Unger, p. 258. Needless to say, the “community” effect of Jewish observance was the same wherever it occurred. We know of prayer services held with some regularity in other camps, too. Secret daily morning and evening services were held in Treblinka, for example. A halakhic question was asked about the propriety of such early morning services. The participants had to rise before the rest of the inmates. It was still night, and the morning service should normally not be prayed before sunrise. The halakhic ruling was that since there was no other possibility for such services, and especially since they could only take place in secret, it was permissible to arrange them while it was still night.5Shimon Efrati, Kuntres meEmek haBakka, Jerusalem, 1948.
Among the eyewitness accounts of such traditional prayer practices in the camps and ghettos, several episodes stand out. Since prayer books were not readily available, they had to be smuggled in. Often, some people would pray by heart aloud, while others listened and responded Amen. Sometimes prayers or complete prayer books would be written by hand on odd pieces of paper or other material. We have the following report:
“Itsche prays every day. He moves into a corner and sinks his eyes into the siddur (prayer book). Through a small opening, a narrow shaft of light falls into the pit. He moves his lips lightly; still he prays, word by word, deeply. We had made a siddur before in an attic. Frauman and I dictated the prayers and Ephraim transcribed them in a notebook. Now, Frauman and I pray by heart and Ephraim and Itsche from our siddur, one after another. Ephraim reads every word clearly with the Sefaradi pronunciation as he had learned it at the Tarbut school. The women too prayed every day; they said the Shema and the Modeh Ani.”
Yet another report:
“I carry along with me on my odyssey through all the camps this unique siddur. It helps me to get relief every time fear and darkness descend upon me. It carries to me the message that it is possible to be sunk in abysmal misery and yet do as Moshe Borochowicz from Zelichow, near Warsaw, did.
“In the hard times that pass over me, I turn the pages of that siddur; I look at them and see them crowded with prayers, letters guarded more than any treasure in the world. And I am full of wonder at the holy and bold simplicity of this ordinary Jew, Moshe Borochowicz of Zelichow. At a time of danger and threatening ultimate destruction, the worry that preoccupied him was that the world might be left without a siddur, and the holy martyrs without remembrance.”6Mordekhai Eliav, Ani Ma’amin, Jerusalem, 1965, 1969, pp. 90–93 (quoted from Halper Leivick, Mit der She’eris haPleito, New York, 1947).
What was it that made Moshe Borochowicz so renowned? Most of his family had been murdered — his wife, his daughter, his sisters and their children. Together with them and all the other Jews, all the siddurim and taliyot were also destroyed. Hiding in a bunker in some forsaken village, cut off completely from the outside, Moshe Borochowicz was worried: will the world remain without a siddur? Most of the pages of his only little siddur were torn. What if he should survive, he would be without a siddur! He resolved to write a siddur for himself there in his hiding place, in memory of the martyrs of his family and also as a memorial to his own name, should he not survive. His main concern, however, was that, God forbid, the world be left without a siddur. Month after month he worked on his siddur, on long and broad pages, in the holy script in which the Sefer Torah, the Torah itself, is traditionally written. In many places between the prayers, at times in the midst of the prayers themselves, he would introduce names of the holy martyrs of his family. His prayer book is now preserved in the Yizhak Katzenelson Museum of Ghetto Fighters.
The Sefer Edut, Book of Testimonies, tells of a Jew who was looking for a place where he could pray undisturbed. In one of the various camps in which he stayed there was a vast open pit in which they used to bury the people who were killed. In that pit he found a quiet corner where he could pray regularly. From then on, his comrades would call that death pit Das Beit-medreshel, the little Bet haMidrash.7Kurtz, p. 14.
It was much more difficult to find tefillin in the camps than prayer books. There were many small-size siddurim and it was relatively easy to smuggle them in. But tefillin are quite a bit bulkier and they are always in pairs. Nevertheless, there were Jews who hardly ever missed saying a few words of prayer with tefillin on, in Auschwitz, in Buchenwald, in Maidanek, and in other places as well. We know of some remarkable stories of the devotion and self-sacrifice that Jews invested in their efforts to secure a pair of tefillin and to put them on daily.
During their long wanderings from labor camp to labor camp, the main worry of the brothers Moshe and Mendel Brachfeld seems to have been how to keep a pair of tefillin and to snatch a few minutes early in the morning to pray in them. But when they were moved to the slave labor camp at Gross-Rosen, the body search was so thorough that their pair of tefillin was found and, together with their other belongings, was confiscated. Mendel especially was greatly worried where he might obtain a pair of tefillin. However, the brothers chanced to come across a Pole who was in charge of burning all useless objects found on the incoming slave laborers. The “organizing,” often the life line of survival in the camps, started between Mendel and the Pole. In the end it was agreed that the Pole would receive one ration of bread from Mendel in return for salvaging a pair of tefillin for the brothers from among the objects to be burned. (Not that the Pole was himself hungry. But a ration of bread was itself a treasure in the camps, for which one could “organize” all kinds of other treasures that camp inmates might have been able either to smuggle into the camps or had succeeded in obtaining there.) After some difficulties and complications, due to the fact that the Pole, at first, did not understand the difference between a shel yad and a shel rosh (phylacteries for the arm and those for the head), the brothers got a complete pair. From then on, together with about fifty other Jews, they put on tefillin daily at Gross-Rosen. But again they were overtaken by misfortune. One of the Kapos tricked them into lending him the tefillin, which he then sold to Jews in another camp. However, once again — according to their view of the matter, as if by a miracle — tefillin were at hand. Among a group of Hungarian Jews who had been brought to the camp was a teirer Yid, a precious Jew, Lippe Lefkovitz from Grosswardein, who succeeded in smuggling in his tefillin which the brothers then used until, soon afterwards, they were moved to the camp at Dornau.
Another eyewitness report reaches us from the pen of Rabbi Z.H. Meisels, who writes of the wonder at Auschwitz and other camps, of Jews standing in line day after day to put on tefillin, to say a blessing and to recite the first verse of the Shema prayer, although the risk of discovery made it extremely dangerous to do so. Rabbi Meisels speaks of miracles in the fulfillment of that “beloved mitzvah.” All belongings and even clothing were taken from new arrivals at the camp. In addition, numerous searches were made even after admission. Anyone on whom anything was found was severely punished. Yet Jews succeeded in concealing tefillin and putting them on daily. In this alone they saw the miracles of the Creator.8Eliav, p. 99 (quoted from Z.H. Meisels, She’elot uTeshuvot Mekadshei Hashem, Chicago, 1955).
No less strong was the determination of many Jews to continue to study Torah no matter what the external conditions might be. We have heard earlier of secret ḥavurot for prayer and study. One of the best known of these was the study group of Rabbi Avreimele Weinberg in the Warsaw ghetto. There were in the ghetto a number of German workshops in which those employed were given special “work cards.” These cards represented a measure of protection for their holders and so everybody was anxious to get them. Those without cards were the “illegal” ones whose chances of survival were minimal. The secret prayer and study groups, including that of Rabbi Weinberg, despised those cards and were “illegals.” They utterly disregarded the German commands, retaining even their traditional ḥasidic garb. Rabbi Avreimele continued his regular discourses on the Talmud and its commentaries. Day and night the voice of Torah study could be heard in their hiding place. After they were discovered and taken away, the volumes they had been studying were found open on page 19 of tractate Bekhorot of the Talmud, as if waiting for others to come and complete the study of that tractate.
Even among those who did avail themselves of the “work cards” and who were employed in the various shops, there were many who pursued the study of the Torah even at their working places. In Plaszow, near Cracow, there was a large factory that produced brushes for the Germans. In charge was a Jew from Cracow, a former brush manufacturer who, because of his expertise in the field, had been ordered to set up the factory and was now in charge of running it under German control. He was allowed to employ two hundred workers. The majority of his “experts” were pious ḥasidic Jews from among the remnant of the liquidated Cracow ghetto. The workers were known among the Germans as the Burstengemeinschaft, the “Brushes Fraternity.” This “fraternity” studied together the traditional “daily page” of the Talmud. In the closets where the brushes were stored, they hid a volume of the small Horeb edition of the Talmud. The workers sat at a long table doing their job, with the Maggid She’ur, the lecturer, at its head, holding in his hand a half-finished brush, as if in the middle of his work. When the German control appeared, the Gemorehle (the little Talmud volume) would disappear and the lecturer would “continue” sewing up the brush in his hand. 9Moshe Prager, Eleh Shelo Nikhne’u, 2 vols., B’nei B’rak, 1969; vol. II, p. 111.
Notwithstanding the much more difficult conditions in the concentration camps, many Jews fulfilled the mitzvah of Torah study there, too. There were no volumes of the Talmud available in the camps, but there were Jews who knew large portions of the Talmud by heart and thus it became once again “Oral Torah,” but in a manner and in circumstances never imagined before. The best opportunity for this kind of “Oral Torah” learning and teaching was on the way from the camps to the place of work outside and again on the road back. In the Eichenwald camp near Posen, for instance, one had to get up at three o’clock in the morning and walk eight kilometers to work. On the way back, though the prisoners normally had to carry the bodies of those people who had perished during the day, they would repeat by heart sections of the Mishnah or recite aloud chapters from the Book of Psalms.10Ibid., p. 145.
When Natan Pick was taken from Auschwitz to the Gorlitz camp, within the network of slave labor camps of Gross-Rosen, he unexpectedly met his brother Yankel there. Knowing a great part of the Talmud by heart, Yankel would select for review those tractates dealing with the subject matter of the day. Thus on the Sabbath he would go over chapters of the tractate Shabbat from memory. Similarly, he would prepare himself for each holiday by studying by heart the relevant passages of the Talmud. The most suitable time for his “studies” were the marches from camp to work and back, which was a distance of six or seven kilometers. As there were a number of other Talmud scholars in this camp, he would invite them to walk together with him. Thus they would march side by side, close together, and all along the way, Yankel Pick would teach various sections of the Talmud, enthusiastically and loudly, in the traditional sing-song of Talmud study. 11Ibid., p. 122.
In the camp of Dautmergen in the south of Germany a group of yeshivah students assembled to study mishnayot together after an exhausting day of slave labor and before climbing into their bunks for their night’s rest. They had no texts, but there was among them a baḥur (young man) from Novogrudok who would recite the text from memory, and thus they would study Mishnah.12Unger, p. 120.
Occasionally there were, in fact, texts at hand. Testimonies from the hell of Maidanek tell of two Dutch Jews who somehow managed to lay their hands on a copy of the Tanakh (Bible). They would squeeze into the middle of the ranks of the slave laborers and, while marching to and from work, they would study Torah together. After the Warsaw ghetto revolt in 1943, some Jews were taken to Bendzin, which was an outlying branch of Maidanek. There were about three thousand Jews there, many of whom did not miss their daily services. On a garbage dump they found some pages of the Talmud that had been used by the Poles as wrapping paper and thrown away. These pages were a godsend for many of the prisoners. Rabbi Yitzhak Zemba gave talmudic lectures based on those pages. He also had a small edition of the Tanakh and so the Bible, too, was taught. In one concentration camp in Estland, the tractate of Rosh Hashanah was studied. Some inmates chanced upon a bundle of faded papers. As they unwrapped it, they found that it was a volume of the Talmud.13Ibid.
Occasionally Jews would write texts themselves, copying them with pencil on odd pieces of paper. Such fragments would pass from hand to hand in the camp. A fragment from the tractate Berakhot, handwritten in Auschwitz, has been preserved.14Eliav, p. 112.
* * * * *
The Rebbe
We used to know the old rabbi of Zydaczow. I was still only a child when he came to our city during the First World War as a refugee from the advancing Russians. I still recall the awe with which we all came out of the mikveh when he appeared. Surrounded and assisted by his gabbaim, he descended into the mikveh, his nakedness protected by the large white linen towels that his aides held up on all sides until he was submerged in the water. Yehoshua Eichenstein, who is referred to as the Rabbi of Zydaczow-Grosswardein, must have been the son, perhaps the grandson, of this “old Zidichover.” Survivors of Auschwitz tell legends of the towering greatness of this man. Notwithstanding the crushing burden of the daily life in that hell, Rabbi Eichenstein never really stopped studying the Torah. Even during the hours of slave labor, he would review intricate talmudic passages from memory. Often one would hear him reciting psalms by heart. From the starvation diet of the camp he saved enough to “organize” a tallit and tefillin. Not only did he pray in them daily, but, rising early in the morning, he would go from man to man encouraging them to put them on themselves, be it even for only a few furtive moments of prayer. He was a source of strength to all those with whom he came into contact. It was said of him that he “kindled in the hearts of many sparks of joy, faith, and trust.”15Eleh Ezkerah, 7 vols., ed. I. Lewin, New York, 1956–72; vol. VI, p. 242.
The Rabbi
What in the United States is referred to as Reform Judaism was known in Germany as “Liberal.” The outstanding personality of German liberal Judaism was Dr. Leo Baeck, rabbi of the Berlin Jewish community and, under the Nazi regime, head of the Reichsvertretung Deutscher Juden. He was a German Jew at home in both worlds, that of Judaism and of the German cultural tradition, prior to its defilement by Nazi Germany. He would follow the reading of the Torah in the Shabbat service with the Greek translation of the Septuagint and his scholarly works were original contributions to modern Jewish scholarship in Germany.
What was life like in Theresienstadt as seen from the vantage point of this highly sophisticated Western Jew? Rabbi Baeck tells that the Jews in the camp were well aware of the fact that any day, any hour, they might face death. No one could know when the murderers would pick them up for “selection.” Yet Jews did not sit and weep. They revealed super-human steadfastness by secretly assembling in the darkness of night in order to study Torah, to participate in courses on Jewish subjects, and to listen to lectures on eternal questions, the mysteries of existence beyond the reach of human understanding. Not only did the participants endanger their lives in case of possible discovery by the Germans, but there was also the added health risk. All day the prisoners were subjected to grinding slave labor, after which they needed rest above all in order to recover. However, the truth was that these “spiritual injections,” as Dr. Baeck calls them, the courses and the homilies, far from weakening these Jews, actually strengthened them, revived them, and gave them new energies to endure the cruelties of the camp.
“I shall never forget these meetings,” wrote Dr. Baeck. “We would assemble in pitch darkness. To light a candle or even a match would have brought immediate disaster upon all of us. Nevertheless, in the midst of all that darkness I sensed light. The faces of these Jews were illuminated by an unearthly radiance, as one was talking to them about matters of the spirit and the eternal questions, about God, about Jews and the world, about the eternity of Israel. I sensed a light in that darkness, the light of the Torah.” His listeners would assure the rabbi that the study and the lectures not only strengthened them spiritually, but even their physical stamina was improved by them. “I often contemplated my people,” concludes Dr. Baeck, “their faces I could not distinguish, but I saw great light.” 16Eliav, p. 135; cf. Morgen Journal, Sept. 9, 1945.
They Found Home
Two brothers were hiding in the ghetto of Cracow after it had been emptied of all its population. After months of a foxlike existence they were finally caught by the Germans. By one of those inexplicable quirks of fate, instead of being shot on sight they were sent to the special SS prison. To their great surprise, they found there a group of young ḥasidim who had been hiding in a bunker and, having been discovered, had also been brought there. Though they had been forced to change the bunker for the prison, their lifestyle had not changed in the least. As it was Rosh Ḥodesh Iyar (the first day of the month of Iyar), the young men were celebrating with a festive meal. Despite the fact that they only had a few small pieces of moldy bread, the joy of the customary Rosh Ḥodesh celebration was not lacking. They had no holy books with them, so they studied Torah by heart. These young ḥasidim sanctified the name of God right there in the SS prison by their exemplary conduct. That wretched hole in the SS kingdom was probably the purest spot in all of Cracow that day. Impressed by their sincerity and saintliness, the other prisoners and even the guards treated them with respect.
In that place, the brothers also came across an old meshumad (apostate) of seventy. Thirty years earlier he had converted to Christianity and no one remembered his Jewish origin. Suddenly his Jewish consciousness burst forth within him. Together with his entire family he surrendered to the Gestapo as Jews. This old meshumad, who came freely to share in the fate of all Jews, attached himself, with all his soul, to the young ḥasidim who spread such a spirit of holiness all around them.17Prager, I, p. 108.
Another one who found his spiritual home in the concentration camp tells how it happened to him. One day some Hungarian Jews were brought into his “block.” From then on that “block” became a Galician-Hungarian “Klaus” (a rather intimate place of worship, also known as a “shtiebel”) where Jews openly prayed, studied Torah, sang and danced. This “hubbub” of prayer and song influenced him deeply. For many years he had lived far removed from all religiosity. But as these Jews revived before him the image of Judaism of old, he gradually, imperceptibly even to himself, became like one of them. Slowly he was drawn into their inspiring ḥasidic singing and ecstatic dancing. He entered their world to such an extent that none of them would guess that this was a former heretic. Telling his story, this survivor confessed: “I felt like one who was freed from an oppressive load. There awakened within me the feeling that the believers call: Trust.”
Another survivor tells of the most noble human being whom he ever knew, a young man of thirty by the name of Levin. He came to the camp from Riga. He had a higher education in law and in biology, his German was excellent and he also spoke several other European languages. Prior to the entry of the German hordes into Latvia he had been a freethinker, far removed from Judaism. However, already in the early days of the ghetto in Riga, as he came in contact with religious Jews he began to immerse himself in the study of Judaism and the problems of Jewish nationhood. Finally, he found his way back to the God of his fathers, he found faith, and a commitment to Judaism. When Levin arrived in the Paprovalna camp in Latvia, he was already a deeply religious Jew. He would engage in long discussions with fellow inmates about the foundations of Judaism, the importance of the divine commandments, and problems of Jewish-national existence. According to an eyewitness he often succeeded in convincing others that, indeed, there was divine providence over man and all God’s creation. He would pray conscientiously three times each day according to the rule. In the evening, when the day’s slavery was over, he would assemble the required quorum of a minyan for the evening service. Mondays and Thursdays he was wont to fast and to give his meagre portion of the allocated food ration to the weak and sick. Often he would lecture to people crowded around him in a darkened room with a seriousness and careful and dignified presentation worthy of a lecture hall under normal conditions and in normal times. His words penetrated the darkness within and around his fellow prisoners, for the truth of the Baal Teshuvah Levin had its root in another dimension; another reality was breaking through the grim borders of the camp.18Eliav, pp. 100–101.
The Ministerialrat
A unique personality that could have arisen only in German Jewry was Hans Goslar. The child of a completely assimilated family, he discovered in a deep personal and existential sense both his people and the faith of his people. As a member of the Social Democratic party he was intensely involved in the political activities and struggles of his party. By profession he was a journalist and for thirteen years he held the office of Press Chief to the Prime Minister of Prussia. During all those years he was also an enthusiastic religious Zionist, in complete identification with the Jewish people and with Judaism. Those who knew Ministerialrat Goslar saw him as one of the most noble of human beings, one of the most sensitive of Jewish souls.19See the chapter on him in Yeshayahu Aviad (Wolfsberg), Dyukna’ot, Jerusalem, 1962. When the Nazis came to power, he fled to Holland, where he was overtaken by the German armies that conquered that country. Together with his family he was taken to Bergen-Belsen. What was his life like in that man-made hell?
Goslar was physically broken and sick in the camp, yet his faith was a source of spiritual energy that sustained the life of many with the light of Judaism. Those who knew him intimately say that he was in no way a great Jewish scholar, but he was a great believer. Nevertheless, in the camp Goslar became a teacher and a guide, gathering around him children from the age of six to sixteen. He taught them Torah, introduced them to the life view of Judaism, and discussed with them all kinds of subjects with a bearing on Jewish existence. On Sabbaths and Holy Days he succeeded in helping other Jews to elevate themselves above the frightening reality of the camp to the height of the spirit that purified the burdened souls of the inmates and transplanted them into another reality.
“I remember,” tells a witness, “how on Friday nights we would assemble in a barracks that was filled with “beds” three tiers high. In the beds lay people with typhus and other diseases; all were hungry, suffering, and fearing for their lives daily. In conditions that defy all description, Goslar would sit on one of the upper bunks and speak to us about Sabbath rest, about the joy of Sabbath, about the holiness of Sabbath. True, we were far removed from any Sabbath rest; we were all forced to toil on the Sabbath as on any other day of the week. But as we were listening to the words of Goslar who spoke to us with a face shining with the light from another world, his voice ringing with the trust of a steadfast faith, entirely transfigured by a great joy, we forgot our gruesome state and on the wings of his inspiring words we were transposed to the tables in our fathers’ houses on the Sabbaths and Holy Days of times gone by…Goslar raised us from the depths of filth and defilement to the heights of faith, of joy, holiness and rest…Often we would burst out into the traditional Sabbath Zemirot (table songs). Though our voices were subdued because of the guards, yet we sang with trembling, and how happy we were!”20A reference to Psalms 2:11, “Serve ye God in fear, and rejoice with trembling.”
And so it was on all Holy Days. In the darkness of camp life, Hans Goslar recreated for his fellow Jews the very essence of the reality of each festival. “On Simḥat Torah Goslar was able to communicate to us his joy over the Torah with his enthusiasm for our holy Torah and for the people of the Torah. In spite of the terrible conditions in the camp, we felt then Simḥat Torah.” The same eyewitness recalls Ḥanukkah in Bergen-Belsen. Goslar searched and somehow succeeded in acquiring some margarine, a veritable treasure in the camp. Yet he denied himself the benefit of its food value and burned it instead to serve as Ḥanukkah candles. For those present, the burning of the lights in that camp was no less a miracle than the finding of the cruse of oil in the Temple by the Maccabees which became the foundation of the festival. “And how these candles lit up the darkness. With our own eyes we saw that they were holy. They were kindled with self-sacrificial devotion!”21Eliav, p. 36.
Pinche Steier
Let the name stand for many others like him. Pinche was a young Jew in the ghetto of Bedzin. In 1942 he was among the lucky ones who were sent only to a work camp. His physical survival itself was a miracle as he lived chiefly on water and bread, refusing to eat non-kosher food. Somehow he got back to the Bedzin ghetto and lived with his wife and children in hiding. However, as he sneaked out from his hiding place in search of some water, he was caught by the Germans. The tortures to which he was subjected could not prevail upon him to betray the location of his family. Back in the work camp, Pinche was the only one who paid no attention to the commands of the camp overseer at the morning “Appell.” When everyone had to be in his place, Pinche could not be found. He was saying his morning prayers in some secret hole. Once, one afternoon, when all the slave laborers were standing in their columns ready to return to work, Pinche was again absent. After a great deal of searching, they found him in the attic of a house, sitting in a sukkah, celebrating the Festival of Tabernacles. He had built it secretly by removing a section of the roof. There he was chanting the traditional ushpizin, the mystical invitation to the exalted guests — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David — asking them to share with him the festive meal in the sukkah. His punishment was seven days in solitary confinement in a dark cellar with only bread and water for food. This, however, had no detrimental effect on Pinche. He spent the entire seven days reciting Psalms in a loud voice. 22Unger, pp. 222–223.
A Boy
Zalman Kleinman, one of the witnesses at the Eichmann trial, told how one day, as he was lying in his bunk in the children’s barracks at Auschwitz, he noticed the second-in-command in the barracks walking towards someone in order to punish him with a rubber truncheon. Since the truncheon was a more recent replacement for the traditional stick, which often broke in the middle of the beating, he got up from his bunk to see how this new instrument worked, so that he could know what to expect should he himself one day have to encounter it. The boy who was to be punished was ordered to come down from his bunk and to bend over. Surrounded by a group of children, he was beaten. The boy neither cried, nor even so much as moaned or sighed. The customary twenty-five lashes was increased to thirty, forty. But the boy was still completely silent. When the number fifty had been reached, the German fell into a fit of madness and started beating the boy all over his body. Yet not a sound was heard from the lad — he was fourteen years old and did not cry. When the officer left, the victim was lifted from the floor by the other boys. Having recovered somewhat from the beating, he responded to their inquiry as to the reason for the punishment by saying, “It was well worthwhile. I brought several prayerbooks to my friends.”23Eliav, pp. 97–98.
A Girl from Hungary
An Auschwitz survivor tells about a girl who was brought to Auschwitz with a transport from Hungary. She succeeded in smuggling in a prayerbook which her father had given her when she was forced to leave home. A Jewish calendar was stuck inside the hard covers of this siddur, written in small letters, with the dates of the Jewish holy days clearly underlined. This prayerbook was the treasure, the well-kept secret of her barracks and was protected by all the girls against any danger of discovery. At night, when all was quiet, when the Kapos and the SS women had gone or were asleep, the girl from Hungary would take her siddur from its hiding place and read chapters from the Book of Psalms to the other girls. Reading the verses in the Hebrew original and translating them into Yiddish, she chose mainly chapters and verses of comfort and consolation: “…The wicked will return to the nether world…like the chaff that the wind disperses…” They knew that Heaven’s vengeance on the Nazi murderers and SS women would not fail, but not whether they themselves would live to see it. The readings from the little prayerbook brought a few hours of sanctity to the inmates of that barracks as they lay in their bunks.
On the night before Pesaḥ (Passover), the girls woke each other at a given signal, in order to listen to the plan of the girl from Hungary how to carry out the Seder without matzot and without all the other material ingredients needed for the celebration. She told them:
“Tomorrow, after midnight, we shall arrange our Seder, not altogether differently from the way it was done by the Marranos in Spain. True, there are neither matzot, nor the Four Cups, nor anything else that would be normally required, but we shall use our imagination. Each one of us will recall the Seder as it was celebrated at home. As I read the Haggadah from my siddur, we shall all remember the holy observance as it used to be. Each one of you will individually light and bless the holy day candles in her heart. When I read the blessings over the wine, as prescribed in the Haggadah, you will lick your lips and say, Amen.”
And so they did that Pesaḥ night. One of the surviving participants of that Seder affirmed that it was the only Seder night whose memory will forever remain fresh in her mind.24Unger, p. 78.
The Old Woman
She appears in the testimony of the German engineer H.F. Gerbah. Her hair was white like snow. In her arms she held a one-year-old child. She stood at the edge of the communal pit into which she and the others were to be pushed, murdered, and buried. The child was crying. Where was his mother; where did he belong? The old woman held him and sang a song for the child; she tickled him playfully until he laughed with joy. Then the Germans proceeded to do their job with Teutonic mightiness.25HaAmidah haYehudit biTekufat haSho’ah, Diyunim beKinus Ḥokrei haSho’ah; Nisan 9–13, 5728 A.M., Jerusalem, 1970.
Shlomo Zlichovsky
Was he a simple Jew? Only in the sense that, prior to the drama of his death that made his name a legend in the world of the ghettos and camps, he was a Jew like so many others, imbued with the pious faith of a young ḥasid. On Erev Shavu’ot, the day before the festival of Mattan Torah, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, in the year 5703 A.M. (1943), in Zdunska-Wola, near Lodz, the Germans ordered all the ghetto inhabitants to assemble in the market place. Nothing was said about the purpose of that assembly, but the Jews knew well what to expect. The Jewish holy days were favorite occasions of the Germans, specially chosen for practicing their murderous inhumanity. On the previous day, ten Jews, mainly from among the ḥasidim, had been arrested under the spurious accusation of “sabotage.” Since a similar event had occurred the previous Purim, when the same number of Jews were arrested under the same circumstances and then publicly hanged, the Jews feared a repetition of the tragedy. The number ten, on both occasions, was intentional. On Purim, the Germans meant to “avenge” the hanging of the ten sons of Haman; this time the number ten was the symbolical revenge for the Ten Commandments, with which Judaism had burdened the conscience of man.
Among the ten arrested was Shlomo Zlichovsky. Little is known about his background, although according to one survivor who knew him personally prior to his incarceration in the ghetto, he was the son of a well-known ḥasid in Pabyanitse. Every year, at the conclusion of the Pesaḥ and Sukkot festivals, Shlomo’s father, Reb Moshe Gedaliah, used to invite all the children who studied in the local ḥadarim26The ḥeder, pl. ḥadarim (lit. “room”), was a kind of all-day elementary school where, from an early age, boys studied the foundations of Judaism, viz. reading Hebrew, Bible, Mishnah and elementary Talmud. to a party in ḥasidic style. He would teach them ḥasidic tunes and songs, and, in the words of our witness and participant, on those occasions Reb Moshe Gedaliah would turn the shtetl “upside down,” by walking through the streets with the children singing, keeping the whole town awake till midnight. Shlomo, who was a melamed, a teacher of young children, apoparently followed in the footsteps of his father. On the High Holidays he would be a Shali’aḥ Ẓibbur,27The Shali’aḥ Ẓibbur is the representative of the praying community, leading it in public worship. To render the phrase as “cantor” would be misleading. Often the office would be one of honor, granted to a pious and respected member of the community, who would render his service without any remuneration. with a choir of boys from the local community to assist him.
The Germans prepared for the hanging of the ten innocent human beings as if it were a popular carnival, bringing their wives and mistresses and other interested parties to the “entertainment.” In their prison, the ten Jews made themselves ready for the ultimate test. At the suggestion of Shlomo Zlichovsky they observed the day as a private and personal Yom Kippur, fasting all day and reciting the entire Yom Kippur order of prayers. Shlomo served as the Shah’aḥ Ẓibbur. However, he did not complete the Ne’ilah, the concluding service of Yom Kippur. As they were taken from the prison to the market place, Shlomo Zlichovsky, at the head of the group marching to the gallows, intoned the unfinished part of the Ne’ilah service, with a voice and a joyous devotion that, for the assembled Jews of the ghetto, transformed what the Germans intended to be a degradation and crushing of the spirit into a triumph of the Jewish soul.
An eyewitness speaks: “Then, as the last preparations were being made for the hanging, I, too, looked into the face of Shlomo Zlichovsky. It was smiling with joy. I stood in the crowded place, in the midst of many humiliated Jews. But suddenly a spirit of encouragement passed over all of us. The gallows were standing in a row, under each of them a chair in readiness. The Germans were in no hurry. A pity to waste a single moment of the ‘entertainment.’ But Shlomo Zlichovsky, still singing, urged them on: ‘Nu!’ (come on already), and jumped on the chair in order to put his head into the hanging loop. Some moments passed. We all held our breath. Deathly silence came over the market place…a silence that found its redemption as Shlomo Zlichovsky’s mighty voice was shattering it in his triumphant ‘Shema Yisra’el.’ We were all elevated; we were exalted. We shouted…without a voice; cried…without tears; straightened up…without a movement; and called, called altogether in the innermost recesses of our souls: ‘Shema Yisra’el.’ ”28Eliav, pp. 128–138.
Two Partners
In Buchenwald, of all places, there was one spot that was a kind of spiritual center in the midst of all that filth and misery. In one of the blocks a group of ḥasidim had established themselves on the fourth tier of the boards that served as beds. They had sought out the highest row of boards intentionally, as it removed them, to some extent, from what was going on in the rest of the room. Thus they could pray, study and talk of ḥasidism relatively undisturbed. Nevertheless, their influence was felt by all the others in the same barracks and so their tier became known as the Tahara Bretter, “the boards of purity.” This group of Jews had come to Buchenwald from Auschwitz during the last phases of the war when many Jews were moved to those concentration camps which were nearer to Germany. As the result of the search to which they had been subjected in the shadow of the ovens, they arrived bereft of everything they had been able to “organize” and hide in Auschwitz. It was impossible to smuggle anything into their new camp and so they were now without a pair of tefillin, which had been their most precious possession. They could not fathom the possibility of an existence without tefillin. But God helps! Unexpectedly, there appeared before them a saving angel in the person of a Ukrainian Kapo, dressed in his black uniform. He was willing to “organize” a pair of tefillin from the SS stores, but demanded in return the exorbitant price of four rations of bread. Although the entire group was originally involved in the negotiations, most of them hesitated paying the required price. Their reasoning was based on halakhic considerations. Four rations of bread meant life for a while, possible survival. Was it not suicidal to forgo it? According to the Torah, was it permissible to go ahead with the transaction? Finally the deal was concluded by only two members of the group, Ya’akov Frenkel and Avraham Eliyahu Weiss, who, pushing aside all halakhic reservations, bought the tefillin in partnership. “We prayed with them with a fervor the like of which is impossible to experience ever again in life.”29Prager, II, p. 132.
These two partners in the tefillin deal at Buchenwald were also engaged in another unique transaction. This time it was not with a Ukrainian guard, but with each other. One day Avraham Eliyahu approached his partner Ya’akov with a “business” proposition. He was going to sell him one bread ration. He suggested that his partner, in view of his extremely weak physical condition, had better accept the deal. Ya’akov wondered what he would have to pay for the bread. The price that his friend desired was a page of Gemara or some mishnayot that Ya’akov knew by heart and would undertake to teach him in return. Ya’akov agreed to the deal only after a group of friends, assembled by both for the purpose of adjudging the case, agreed that Ya’akov was indeed in much greater need of that piece of bread than his partner.30Ibid.
Shavuot in Liberated Buchenwald
A survivor of Buchenwald was walking back to the camp, soon after its liberation, having helped bury the mounds of bodies that had been dumped all over the camp. He was pondering the words of the Kaddish that he would recite over the mass graves: “Magnified and exalted be His great name.” What would now become of the Jewish people, what of Judaism, after this incomprehensible disaster? To him, the face of every Jewish inmate in the camp mirrored a vivid picture of the Jewish people. A crippled and shrunken people, a race which had suffered the most tremendous spiritual, as well as physical, onslaught in the history of mankind; a race of orphans, widows and widowers; a race of mourning fathers, of saddened mothers whose babies had been snatched away from their breasts; of sons who have seen their fathers, brothers, and sisters burnt to ashes while still half-alive. He was wondering if anyone would care to hear again of God, Judaism or religion. Yes, of course, the liberators would now all come and provide the survivors with food, drugs and medical aid. The Americans would flood them with cigarettes, chocolate and vitamins. But who would provide the religious serum which was so necessary to instill some spirit of Godliness into a hopeless, crushed, people? His father, who could have guided him in that hour of mental anguish, was no longer. Where was he to turn? Where to go? How to start anew? To his great surprise, it was right there, in the midst of the pyres of the camp, in the hell of Buchenwald, that he found himself, and experienced what he called his religious revival. A few days before his scheduled departure from Buchenwald, an announcement came over the camp loudspeaker that the Jewish chaplain to the American forces would be conducting religious services that evening, which was the beginning of Shavu’ot, the festival of the Torah revelation at Sinai.
He wondered: was this not too early? Were not the survivors being put to the test too soon? Who among those thousands of physical and mental cripples would want to attend services and prayers so soon after their tragic experience? The festival of receiving the Torah! Indeed! Our survivor felt that the loudspeaker announcement was a challenge to all of them and to their loyalties. But this is how he summed up the camp’s response to the challenge:
“…just as you cannot measure the physical strength of an oppressed people, so you cannot gauge its spiritual wealth and power. On that evening, Buchenwald staged a unique demonstration of faith and loyalty to God. Thousands of liberated Jews crowded into the specifically vacated block for the first post-war Jewish religious service to be held on the soil of defeated Germany. The Muselmänner, the cripples, the injured, and the weak came to demonstrate to the world that the last ounce of their strength, the last drop of their blood, and the last breaths of their lives belonged to God, to Torah, and to the Jewish religion.
“As Chaplain Schechter intoned the evening prayers, all the inmates in and outside the block stood in silence, reaccepting the Torah whose people, message, and purpose Hitler’s Germany attempted to destroy. Jewish history repeated itself. Just as our forefathers who were liberated from Egypt accepted the law in the desert, so did we, the liberated Jews of Buchenwald, reaccept the same Law in a concentration camp in Germany.”31J. Glatstein, I. Knox, S. Margolis (eds.), Anthology of Holocaust Literature, Philadelphia, 1969, pp. 262–263.
* * * * *
Such are only a few examples, chosen at random from among many thousands which demonstrate such a mightiness of faith, such unsurpassed integrity of character and conscience. The ghettos and concentration camps that saw so much demoralization and human degradation were also the holy of holies on this earth. In those long and dark years, when mankind was silently standing by as the most barbarous crime in all human history was willfully perpetrated by one of the technologically most advanced nations of the world, it was in the ghettos and the concentration camps that the dignity of man was safeguarded, where the faith of man reached its highest manifestation, commensurate in its greatness to the abysmal depths of the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization.
Yizhak Katzenelson, the great Jewish poet of the Holocaust, immortalized the walk of Shlomo Zlichovsky from the prison to the gallows. Katzenelson calls upon heaven and earth to sing that name, the name of the man who redeemed human dignity on earth. The poet comforts this poor, degraded globe of ours:
Sing!
Comfort ye,
Comfort ye, my earth,
Speak to the heart of the fallen one:
Hail unto thee, earth!
…graced and blessed…
Who are all your heroes
compared to the one
hanged there in the market place
of Zdunska-Wola?
God Himself,
smiles sadly,
wrapt in brilliance.
For Shlomo Zlichovsky has found favor in His eyes,
the man and the song.
He loves His son,
Shlomo, the weak, the pale one.
Who in all the earth is mighty like he!
It is for this one that God prayed when He created man.
“Oh, the realization of My dream,
of My longings.
My chosen one,
whom my soul desires.”
Everyone of the examples presented here stands for the conduct of thousands of others and Katzenelson’s praise of Shlomo Zlichovsky is shared by many. The few of whom we have heard are a reflection of the continuity of Judaism in the most extreme conditions. Each one, in his own most personal life, reflects the eternity of Israel.